Rikers Visits Mean Hours-Long Waits and Guards Refusing Attorneys, Insiders Testify

New Yorkers trying to visit loved ones on Rikers Island are routinely forced to endure hours-long waits, inconsistent rules and poor communication from the Department of Correction, according to a scathing new City Council report.
 

Chair of the Council’s Criminal Justice Committee, Sandy Nurse (D-Brooklyn), opened a Wednesday hearing on the topic with a blunt assessment: “For family members, an hour-long visit is a day-long endeavor,” she said, noting Rikers’ isolation more than a mile and a half from the nearest subway. “The Oversight and Investigations Division has identified some maddening inefficiencies and inconsistencies in this process.”

The OID report, which comes as federal oversight and a looming shutdown plan drags on, found that a maximum one-hour visit often requires five to six hours on the island, with visitors shuffled through long lines, redundant screening and a maze of waiting rooms. Signage about expedited lines for people with babies is posted after they’ve already waited, investigators said.
 

Other rules — such as whether reading materials are allowed — are applied arbitrarily.
 

All told, DOC says it takes an average of four-and-a-half hours to complete a visit with someone on Rikers. But that figure doesn’t include the time people wait outside at the main entrance before they are initially screened.

Council investigators found that even on relatively calm days, visitors waited outside for 90 minutes before even reaching a first round of metal detectors at the main visit checkpoint.
 

“Our position is that this is an underestimate,” Nurse said, referring to the DOC’s average time. She noted the Council’s investigator waited outside for 90 minutes before they got into the main visit area for an initial screening.
 

“That’s a huge amount of time,” she added.
 

At the hearing, defense lawyers also charged that jail officers were falsely signing so-called visit refusals when their clients really did want to meet with them.
 

Overall, minor fixes like adding seating to outdoor lines, updating DOC’s website and consistently enforcing existing policies “could make the visit process more humane,” Nurse said.
 

Attorneys face their own hurdles, including the fact that there is just one meeting room at the Rose M. Singer Center for women, a choke point defenders say has forced them to take on fewer clients. Four hundred and eighty six women are incarcerated there.
 

“These issues underscore the need to accelerate the transition to borough-based jails,” Nurse added, emphasizing that delays to the city’s 2027 legal deadline to close Rikers have real consequences for families now.
 

Councilmember Gail Brewer (D-Manhattan), Chair of the Oversight and Investigations Committee, echoed the concerns, drawing on her own past visits with some of her adopted children.
 

“The logistics of visiting are daunting,” she said. “Time is spent in various waiting rooms, on lines, or going through redundant security checks. Much of that time may be spent outside, with no place to sit or any water to drink.”
 

Brewer said OID investigators found that “literally every visitor interviewed… said they had poor experiences with Rikers staff,” with some describing interactions as “rude,” “nasty” or “demoralizing.”
 

She also highlighted ongoing problems with the jail’s limited tele-visit system, which is available only on Fridays from 8 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. and is often plagued by cancellations that force weeks-long delays.
 

DOC Commissioner Lynelle Maginley-Liddie defended the department’s efforts to create child-centered programming, pointing to new child-friendly visitation hubs and museum-based family programs.
 

“These spaces help reduce unease and create opportunities for more meaningful interactions between parents and their children,” she said.
 

“We recognize that the visit process has its challenges and is in need of improvement,” she told lawmakers. “The work is underway, but it must be thoughtful and intentional.”
 

She also touted ongoing work on a citywide online scheduling platform saying it “will completely change how the department manages visits and how visitors experience visits.”
 

But DOC staff indicated that the system is nowhere near completion and refused to give a timeline when it would be finalized.
 

Maginley-Liddie also noted that the DOC is in the process of hiring a new executive director in charge of improving the visitor experience.
 

The Council hearing comes as the city’s effort to close Rikers — once planned for 2027 — remains years behind schedule, with no clear end date and massive construction setbacks at the borough-based jails meant to replace the island’s facilities.
 

She noted the Council has repeatedly been told reforms are “in process” — including during earlier hearings on grievances and sexual abuse — without timelines or measurable progress.
 

The hearing also comes as federal judge Laura Swain has announced that she will appoint a “remediation manager” to take over parts of the troubled department. She is currently reviewing candidates for the role and trying to work out how that person will operate.
 

Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani will also likely appoint a new DOC commissioner to run the department.
 

Defenders Delayed
Meanwhile, public defenders described Rikers’ legal visit system as increasingly dysfunctional, despite court rulings, including a 2001 decision which held that delays regularly exceeding 45 minutes unconstitutionally burdened access to the courts.
 

“Visitation issues at Rikers Island are not a new phenomenon,” said Tahanee Dunn, a criminal defense and prisoners’ rights attorney at The Bronx Defenders. “These rights are at the crux of every criminal case, but they are wholly illusory if the attorney-client relationship cannot be meaningfully fostered when a person is in pretrial detention.”
 

Dunn said she has experienced “endless barriers” to seeing clients — with some facilities, particularly the Robert N. Davoren Center, consistently requiring attorneys to wait upward of two hours.
 

At other facilities on Rikers, she said, “wait times can be as long as three to four hours. As stunning as that sounds, it is truly a common occurrence.”
 

Often, she said, officers offer no valid explanation. “The catch-all reason is lack of escorts,” she testified. “There is no sense of importance or urgency from the officers in charge of the process.”
 

When she tried to visit one client, officers said he didn’t want to meet her. Days later, he swore he had never refused.
 

“Rather, no one had come to his housing area to notify him of the visit,” she said. “This happened with many virtual visits, essentially cutting us off from access to our client for over a month.”
 

Another attorney, Julia Tedesco of New York County Defender Services, told lawmakers that DOC staff have begun fabricating client “refusals” to avoid facilitating visits. She described a recent incident in which officers claimed her client declined both a video call and an in-person meeting — only for a supervisor later to admit no refusal slip had actually been signed.
 

“A corrections officer forged my client’s signature,” Tedesco alleged. “This is not a misunderstanding. It is a deliberate obstruction.”
 

She called the practice a “direct violation” of the Sixth Amendment. “The persistent denial of counsel access through fabricated refusals does not merely inconvenience attorneys — it silences clients.”
 

During the hearing, Nurse noted repeated complaints from parents who were turned away or reprimanded for carrying extra diapers.
 

Sherrieann Rembert, DOC’s bureau chief/chief of staff, insisted the policy was clear: Caregivers may bring two diapers to the jail, though only the one on the baby is permitted on the visit floor. “If there’s a need to change the baby’s diaper, the visitor will be escorted off and can resume their visit,” she testified. “That diaper is located in the facility’s secure locker.”
 

Defense lawyers complained that access had worsened since women were moved into units alongside men. That was done earlier this year as the number of people incarcerated has spiked to more than 7,000. 
 

Before construction cut space inside the Rose M. Singer Center, there were three booths designated for visits where detainees sit and talk with their loved ones. Now there is only one, they testified.
 

Elizabeth Bender, senior policy counsel at Neighborhood Defender Service of Harlem, said legal visits almost never begin within the 45-minute window DOC promises on its own website. “That is a joke,” she said. Attempts to schedule visits in advance via a DOC phone line “have been completely unsuccessful.”
 

Confidentiality is “almost nonexistent,” she added, with attorneys forced to shout through plexiglass while nearby officers and other detainees can overhear sensitive conversations.
 

Bender also described the daily culture on Rikers as openly hostile, recounting a recent incident in which a correction officer allegedly told one of her colleagues, “I have a chloroform-soaked rag behind my desk just for you.”

The attorney continued to visit her client.
 

She said they are still debating whether to file a complaint: “Everyone’s reaction was, complain to whom? What’s going to happen? This happens all the time.”
 

Museum’s Impact
It was not all bleak.

Leslie Bushara, chief program officer at the Children’s Museum of Manhattan, described her organization’s seven-year partnership with DOC as the exception to a system otherwise defined by dysfunction.
 

“The Children’s Museum of Manhattan has built a strong and successful partnership with the Department of Correction to keep families connected during incarceration,” she said. “This program has become a national model,” she added, with replications underway in Kansas City and Massachusetts.
 

Bushara described twice-monthly museum visits for incarcerated parents, their children and caregivers. They include afternoons of “play and bonding and learning,” complete with shared meals, art-making and backpacks of supplies for kids.
 

She read a letter from the mother of a 10-year-old who recently participated.
 

“‘My son told me he would give away all his Xbox games just for another day like the one we had,’” the woman wrote. Another father said the program reminded him “we are parents,” and gave him “a preview of freedom.”
 

At the hearing, Tanya Krupat, vice president of policy and advocacy at the Osborne Association, urged the city to reinstate the DOC Visiting Working Group, a collaborative panel of staff and advocates that operated from 2016 until the pandemic. Panel recommendations helped create a free van service offered by the department, civilian greeters, and additional facility training and other reforms.
 

Ashley Santiago-Conrad, a senior organizer with Freedom Agenda, said her family endured the system for two and a half years while her nephew — diagnosed with autism and other developmental disabilities — was held at Rikers.
 

“We’d arrive by 7 a.m. and wait under that hell of a bus shelter,” she said. “Guards yelled at my 3-year-old niece to ‘face the wall’ as canine units searched us. They even forced her to shake out her diaper.”
 

On some days, Santiago said, her diabetic sister skipped insulin to avoid forfeiting a long-awaited visit. Mothers with newborns often had to leave because baby food and formula were banned.
 

Many times, Santiago’s family was told her nephew “didn’t want to come down,” only for him to call later saying officers never arrived to bring him to a visit. “It’s almost like the entire process is designed to deter you from coming.”
 

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